One of the documentaries I saw about the crash made the point that even if the pilots lost all airspeed indications, there is a specific procedure to follow that will keep the plane in the air without stalling. Something like, apply 85% power and a certain amount of nose-up pitch. And that in several other pitot tube failure incidents, pilots had failed to do this and made the problems much worse than they would have been. (I'm not a pilot so tell me if that's bogus.) So I think there was always going to be a significant amount of pilot contribution to the crash. But it remains to be seen how much other factors contributed, such as the flight control software.

So sad. But life goes on. Question: are the Airbus manuals available in various languages? In French? I'm still struck by the CVR of the flight from Lima that crashed into the Pacific after (what seemed like) hours of frantic effort by the pilots to figure out what was happening. Their manuals were all in English and you can hear them mixing English and Spanish as they tried to read the things at they same time they tried to aviate and communicate. I'd hope Airbus would have manuals available in at least German and French as well as English. But English is the agreed upon compromise for ATC so maybe not. Anybody know?

Question: are the Airbus manuals available in various languages? In French? I'm still struck by the CVR of the flight from Lima that crashed into the Pacific after (what seemed like) hours of frantic effort by the pilots to figure out what was happening. Their manuals were all in English and you can hear them mixing English and Spanish as they tried to read the things at they same time they tried to aviate and communicate. I'd hope Airbus would have manuals available in at least German and French as well as English. But English is the agreed upon compromise for ATC so maybe not. Anybody know?

A partial answer to that question is, the BEA Interim Report (link here) has scans of some pages from the A340 manual and they are in French. (pp. 69 and 119-126) Don't know if all the flight docs and checklists were French, though.

So sad. But life goes on. Question: are the Airbus manuals available in various languages? In French? I'd hope Airbus would have manuals available in at least German and French as well as English. But English is the agreed upon compromise for ATC so maybe not. Anybody know?

but it's all in Engplsh. I went throught the airbus main site pretty carefully and didm;t even find a way to get the site to display in French. Somebody know more about this? I'm not interesetd in English language versions. I want to see that there are versions availabae in pilots' native lanuguage.

I was really surprised when this NOVA special came out back in February

They nailed the cause of the crash without having any CVR/FDR data

I agree. A VERY interesting Nova if you're able to find it somewhere. It always amazes me how few accidents there

are when you consider the thousands and thousands of flights every day. And then, a high percentage of the accidents

that do occur should never have happened. I'm thinking of the Eastern Airlines L1011 that crashed in the Florida everglades

years ago. The pilots literally flew the plane into the ground because they were distracted with a faulty indicator light.

I guess the human factor will always be there...

Right on point. Eastern 401. December 29, 1972. 101 people died in that incident over a burned out 10 cent light bulb. The crew was distracted by the failure of the nose gear light that indicates it's down and locked. The captain and copilot were messing with the lens cover, while the engineer went to the avionics bay to visually look at the nose gear. The L-1011 had a porthole in the avionics bay that let a person see the nose gear itself and the down-lock. Either the captain or the copilot bumped the yoke, and in those days, that's all it took to disconnect the autopilot. No audible disconnect warning was used either. The airplane began a slow descent, all the way to the Everglades. Miami Tower called the airplane for an altitude check, and it was at that point, the captain looked up to see saw grass going by his window...too late...

One of the documentaries I saw about the crash made the point that even if the pilots lost all airspeed indications, there is a specific procedure to follow that will keep the plane in the air without stalling. Something like, apply 85% power and a certain amount of nose-up pitch. And that in several other pitot tube failure incidents, pilots had failed to do this and made the problems much worse than they would have been. (I'm not a pilot so tell me if that's bogus.) So I think there was always going to be a significant amount of pilot contribution to the crash. But it remains to be seen how much other factors contributed, such as the flight control software.

That procedure only works if the aircraft isn't already stalled. From what I've read of the accident so far, it appears the flight crew didn't realize the aircraft had already stalled which would have required a huge pitch down which would have seemed suicidal without airspeed information. The AOA during the stall was around 30 degrees so it would have taken quite a dive to recover from the stall.